CHAPTER IV

I GO PLEASURING ON THE LEVEL OF FREE WOMEN AND DRINK SYNTHETIC BEER


~1~

I had returned from my adventure on the labour levels in a mood of
sombre depression. Alone again in my apartment I found difficulty in
getting my mind back upon chemical books. With a sense of relief I
reported to Holknecht that I thought myself sufficiently recovered to
return to work.

My laboratory I found to be almost as secluded as my living quarters. I
was master there, and as a research worker I reported to no man until I
had finished the problem assigned me. From my readings and from
Holknecht's endless talking I had fairly well grasped the problem on
which I was supposed to be working, and I now had Holknecht go carefully
over the work he had done in my absence and we prepared a report. This I
sent to headquarters with a request for permission to start work on
another problem, the idea for which I claimed to have conceived on my
visit to the attacked potash mines.

Permission to undertake the new problem was promptly granted. I now set
to work to reproduce in a German laboratory the experiments by which I
had originally conquered the German gas that had successfully defended
those mines from the world for over a century. Though loath to make this
revelation, I knew of no other "Discovery" wherewith to gain the stakes